What does it mean to truly be free!
by Pokepika's Haunt
Summary: One Piece Drabble. I have no idea what I was really thinking when I wrote something so profound with such a character as the center of the story, but oh well. More inside, rated T for safety-


A/N. This was originally supposed to be a One Piece Fem!Luffy fanfic where Luffy's Devil Fruit was based loosely off of the ghost type pokemon Banette. But the idea didn't quite settle like the others, so after some heavy thinking, I wound up getting absolutely no ideas! So I just desided whatever and went on a bout of insanity. Gotta love it when any and all inspiration abandons you. This is a one shot.

Summary: A World Noble recounts a time when everything she believed to be true was put into question for her and an answer was finally given for the one thing that always left her wondering.

What does it mean to be truly free?

I have no idea where this idea came from. This does have Fem!Luffy, but it may not be clearly stated is all.

**Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece!**

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><p><strong>What does it mean to be truly free?<strong>

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><p>My name is Anya.<p>

I am the daughter of a Tenryubiito. A descendent of the 20 kings that created the World Government.

I always thought I understood everything, that I couldn't be wrong. After all, how can a World Noble, the most important person in the world, be wrong?

I always thought I understood what true freedom meant. Until a certain day that crossed my life, that wound up changing everything I thought was true.

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><p>It was 33 years ago, I was 5 then. Pirates were everywhere, and believed to be some of the funnest things to mess with. They got away with whatever they pleased, but when turned into a slave, all that pride went down the drain.<p>

I had never once taken their, or any other slaves feelings into consideration, and why should I have been inclined to? None of the other, older Tenryubiitos cared. So why should I?

Not until it happened.

I was holding onto my mother's hand, which was so much bigger then mine back then, everything was so much bigger back then.

A slave Father had recently bought for me, to teach me how to handle them in the future, had escaped from our grasp.

I hadn't beenc areful, but I was only five, Father could forgive me for the slip up, as long as it didn't become a habit.

The man thought it might be a bright idea to try and take me hostage, I have no idea if it was just a way to end his life quickly or some last ditch effort at what he considered freedom.

He didn't get far though, an admiral came and rescued me, and before the slave went up in flames thanks to the collar, he gazed at me straight in the eyes, and the look made me shiver.

They looked like they had no freedom, like this was the last bit they had left, and they were taking advantage of it right then and there.

I had to wonder, when in the world did a slave have freedom?When did anybody below our rank have freedom?

So as soon as I got home that day, the quesiton buzzing about annoyingly in my head, I went and looked up the term slave. I had never even known the definition.

**slave **[slayv]

_n_ (_plural_ **slaves**)

**1. ****somebody forced to work for another: **somebody who is forced to work for somebody else for no payment and is regarded as the property of that person.

They had no freedom, but they had at some point or another. Forced...Hadn't it been their decision to become a slave?

That was what had crossed my head when I finished, or rather the slave, finished reading.

So then I began to wonder. If a slave had no freedom, then who did? Could it be those who didn't have to work, in which case children had the most freedom in the world.

Or was it just something in general.

I jsut couldn't leave it unanswered, it angered me that I didn't know what true freedom was. What it really meant.

So I went and I started asking, mainly the slaves, they had no freedom, but they knew what it was.

I never got a clear answer from them, so I started asking Mother and Father. Their definition wasn't clear at all.

Something about money and being at the top.

No that wasn't true freedom, if that was so, then everybody would want to be a Tenryubiito. No, everybody was afraid of us, so no, we did not have true freedom.

We were too busy staying in our own perfect, vain, selfish world where everything revolved around us and we were never wrong.

We were trapped by our own selfishness.

So who would know what true freedom was?

I'd asked everybody I could, and the answers were always different! It infuriated me, all the inconsistancies, but as much as it made me angry, I had to know.

I couldn't just leave that question unanswered...

It wasn't until 25 years ago, I was 13 then, that I finally got my answer.

I was visiting Sabaody Archipelago, and like always, the peasants bowed as I passed. I was didn't take any aknowledgement or notice of it like my siblings had, both older and younger, nor like my parents. It brought no joy to me,nto when I still didn't know the answer to my question.

Eventually I wound up getting seperated from the others, a usually deathly mistake, as I was only human, though normally loath to admit it. Without any guards to back me up, I could easily be killed, and nobody would know until the perpertraitors was long gone, and that was if my body had even been found.

That was when I met _her._

It was in one of the bad groves, a really stupid move on my part, I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going.

"Hey there." She had said so blythily. She hadn't even gotten up to kneel before me like all the others had. For a few seconds I wondered why, only to catch the look in her eyes. It told me everything.

She didn't care. Not at all. I could have been the blasted Pirate King, and she'd just sit there and stare down at me like I was on the same level, the same status as her.

At the time I had no idea who she really was, how powerful and dangerous she was.

I didn't know that she would become one of the strongest pirates to ever sail the seas, no already _was _one of the strongest. She just wasn't the best, not yet.

The future Queen of the Pirates, though she might as well have been king.

She had all the power and authority to go with such a title, even if her gender didn't match it, it didn't _need_ to.

Sitting there on that giant mangroove root, so relaxed and carefree, she was seventeen, four or so years older then me, and even I, with all the influence and power that came with my title as Tenryubiito, felt the compelling need to bow down before her. She didn't even know how to use Haki yet.

And with all the fear I felt while just looking at her, I found myself realizing one thing.

With her carefree attitude, defiance of the law, the very fact that she was still roaming free and not stuck somewhere behind bars thanks to the Marines.

I had asked other pirates, former pirates turned into slaves thanks to the human auction house. But none of them had cut it, none of them could give me the answers I needed for my question. Still had been so inconsistent. And piracy was said to be the ultimate freedom.

She wasn't like them. She was the very definition of freedom. Freedom, free will, free life, she was just freedom. Perfectly personified.

She could answer my question perfectly. I could just tell.

So I asked. And for all tha feeling I got from her, she just gave me a funny look before laughing her head off at me. She found me and my question amusing.

When she calmed down though, the smile that crossed ehr face shocked me into silence. I couldn't retort or demand anything like I was so inclined to doing like before.

That smile made her look far older then she was. It didn't fit, causing the effect it did, on the face of someone so young. It aged her in the most subtlelist of ways. Ways I could not comprehend with my naive and simple ways of thinking. I hadn't gone through Hell and back like she had. And I probably never would.

"Your question is not something that is easily answered. Or rather. There is no consistent answer. That's what you're looking for, isn't it?" I couldn't nod my head at her question. Even her voice, once so childish and cheerful, had become solemn, more grown up. Something else that did not, and never would fit with the person I saw before me.

"Well I'm sorry to say. But there is no consistent answer to what freedom truly is." I couldn't believe that, I couldn't take that for an answre. I needed to know, I needed a word other then inconsistent. I couldn't just drop it at that. So I did what I was taught to do when I didn't get what I wanted. I threw a fit.

A big, childish, tempertantrum that you would expect from a two year old who's toy had just gotten taken away because they wouldn't share. Not a 13 year old pre-teen just entering adulthood, an up-and-coming teenager who would seen be expected to act like a responsible lady, already was expected to act as such.

"How can that be? There has to be an answer! One that is consistent! And You will tell me it NOW! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!" I demanded as I stomped my feet and raged and hollered until I was red, and then eventually blue in the face. She just sat there and chuckled the whole time.

She found that my behavior, though admittedly irritable and spoiled, was cute. So she offered a better exlanation, one that had pacified me slightly.

"Freedom is inconsistent, because it depends on the person." still not good enough, but it would do. I calmed down, stopped raging like a spoiled child, and began to just sniff disappointedly.

Though it wasn't the answer I wanted, it had left me intrigued. She obviously knew more information concerning the topic at had, I wanted more information.

She was willing to give it.

"What freedom means to one person, may be completely different for another. Just like with popularity and such. I'm sure you've noticed the inconsistency. How none of the answers are similar or even close to being the same. Everybody's got a different opinion. Different experiences affect them, and as such, they see things differently. Freedom is one of those things."

So I asked her if there was a basic freedom. One that everybody had, but not all got to experience. And she thought for a moment, not too long, not even that long.

"The freedom to choose. But not everybody gets it, not everybody gets to choose." I thought it over, and she was right I found. Choices, people were always making them, but not everybody got to make the choice themselves. Like when a person died. Like back with the slave when I was five, and little and didn't understand how the world really worked. (I still don't understand.)

"And death is the ultimate choice. It's the greatest thing you can leave a person. Take away all their choices in life if you must, Miss Tenryubiito, but if there is one thing you do, one kind act in your life that you decide must be done, it is to give a person the choice of how they die. On their own terms, not yours." Then she got up and landed right in front of me, before grabbing me and dragging me through the groves and out of the bad areas. All the way to the edge of the island.

"Well you asked what freedom truly meant, and I guess I should give you my version of freedom. What it truly means to me. I might as well add to the collection after all." and with that simple explanation, she stood proudly in front of me, beaming with an expression that did fit her face, did match her appearance, actually seemed right for once, with her arms spread wide as if to show the largest amount of treasure either had ever seen. And in a way. it was.

It was her freedom, one of her greatest treasures. The sea.

That was her freedom, to sail across the seas and have as many adventures as possible, with the people she cared about.

And it was so simple, yet I understood it so well. Far more then I would ever understand the others.

And before I knew it, much to my displeasure, she left. Disappeared almost as suddenly as she appeared. Leaving me with a parting word, a request to make sure I kept thinking, she seemed to really like it that I did that. Must have come across a lot of people who didn't critisize, wonder, and question everything around them.

"Think for a minute, or even a century. But don't adopt somebody else's version of freedom for yourself. Think, think as long as it takes, think even after you die, and figure out. What does freedom truly mean to you?"

I did't find out her name until I saw the wanted poster a week later.

After she had tore apart Impel Down and Marine Ford, just another two facilities that belonged to the marines to add to the list of damages and embarassments she had delivered to them. A smack int eh face I couldn't help but laugh about.

Monkey D. Luffy. "Straw Hat Luffy", captain of the Straw Hat Pirates, the girl who punched my idiot of an uncle Charloss and knocked out the rest of his family. The girl who challenged Whtiebeard and Big Mom, and even Kaido, three of the Yonko's, straight out and without hesitation.

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, because I realized, and was secretly glad, that as hard as the marines would try, they could never catch her, would never catch her. She had freedom, and if they were going to take it away, if they were going to try to steal it, then she would take the last choice she could, the ultimate freedom into her own hands, whether they wanted her to or not, and die on her own terms, in her own way.

And she'd smile all the while, laughing like the maniac she was.

And all I could do was thank her, a pirate, for teaching me, a tenryubiito, one who was not supposed to be wrong ever in their life times, what it meant to truly be free.

Or rather, as close to an answer as I could ever get. I'd find my freedom some day, and when I did, I'd die happy, on my own terms too.

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><p>AN. Ok, that was long and rather deep. Thanks for reading and please review and tell me what you all think! I have no idea what I was thinking though. Just a random one shot, a bit of a drabble really. See ya!


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